ED RUSCHA

On Robert Adams

“After people live awhile in a place to which they’ve laid waste, it gets to be easy to hate a great many things. Including themselves. And anything green that tries to rise again.” Robert Adams “There is another world and it is in this one.”  Paul Éluard There have been few post-war American photographers, if […]

Who is Ed Ruscha (And Why is he So Damn Cool?)

Who is Ed Ruscha? Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Curator Karen Breuer gives a primer on the iconic Los Angeles artist, examining his style, his subject matter, and his effortlessly cool persona.

Shape of Light: One Hundred Years of Zombietude

“While photographic techniques and mysteries are patiently explained, the paintings present are left simply to be. Everywhere one sees photographers paying homage to painters, nowhere the reverse. A fact which speaks inadvertent volumes.”

Bruno V. Roels Interview: A Palm Tree is a …

“To me, everything is language. Language allows you to use a limited set of elements to build ever changing and endless worlds.” Bruno V. Roels’ work encompasses many layers of language, economy, history and repetition which hints a greater understanding of where photography becomes complicit in its indelible position as a conduit for fragmented meaning. […]

Ed Ruscha – Buildings and Words (2017)

Ed Ruscha: Buildings and Words is a short-length documentary, commissioned by MOCA, about Ruscha’s extraordinary body of work.​ The film is written and directed by Felipe Lima and narrated by Owen Wilson. Director and Writer: Felipe Lima Produced by: Ways & Means Executive Producers: Lana Kim, Jett Steiger Producer: Rachel Nederveld Narrated by: Owen Wilson […]

Peter Piller: Unheimlich As Above…

“A good number of the images allegedly had annotations written on the images such as “not interested in pictures”, “Deceased”, and “Looks better from the ground” written on them”

Ed Ruscha – Words Have No Size (2017)

The road to being an artist was “like blind leading the blind” says Ed Ruscha, who grew to be one of the most recognised American artists of the 20th century. Hear the story of West Coast Jazz, his break with abstract art and L.A. in the 1960s. When Ed Ruscha entered the Los Angeles art […]

John Maclean: The Agony and Ecstasy of Artistic Influence

“In a sense I was trying to complete a circle: I travelled to the neighbourhoods that had some bearing on the childhood development of my art-heroes and consequently on the art they made as adults, and then I tried to photograph these places through the ‘afterimage’ of the artistic influences these works had imparted on me”

Los Angeles Plays Itself: Anthony Hernandez at SFMOMA

“No, Anthony Hernandez’ sober look at his hometown reminds us that Los Angeles is not the most photographed city in the world, but rather, one of the most culturally, economically and racially divided places in America.” It often said that Los Angeles is the most photographed city on earth. It’s not true. It is also […]

Ed Ruscha on Change in Los Angeles Today (2016)

Edward Ruscha is an American artist who has specialized in painting, drawing, photography, and books. Born in 1937, Ruscha moved to Los Angeles to attend school at Chouinard Art Institute in 1956. In the early 1960s, he contributed to the birth of “pop art” and his work was featured in the famed 1962 exhibition “New […]

Ed Ruscha on Wanting a Product and a Final Result

Heaven Hell @ Ed Ruscha “I have really no direction, I have no plans. I can’t write my future. I can’t write my own history. I’m most fascinated by that one idea of the things that are undone now, will be done in five years time.” – Ed Ruscha   MR. RUSCHA: I think the […]

Ed Ruscha on Route 66, Making Books and “Choppy Movement”

“So in a sense they (books) had no–there was no school of thought, and I felt at that time that it was unexplored. That’s one reason it attracted me.” MR. KARLSTROM: What about your books? This is a last thing that I’d like to at least get started on. You have created I don’t know […]

Ed Ruscha on Studio Life, Domestic Life and Its Tax on the Creative Drive

Dirty Baby, 1977, Graphite and acrylic paint on paper   “I couldn’t mix the domestic life and the free form life, I just couldn’t. They’re sort of difficult to mix.”   MR. RUSCHA: There was one period when I moved to Pasadena. I had a studio at 60 West Colorado Boulevard that was about 20,000 […]

Ed Ruscha – “TateShots” (2013)

Ed Ruscha’s exploration of language and American West Coast culture centred on Hollywood has made him one of the pre-eminent artists of his generation. Since the early 1960s he has channelled his fascination with words and the act of communication into books, print-making, photography, drawing and painting. TateShots went to meet him at his studio […]

Ed Ruscha: “One-Way Street” (2005)

 Edward Ruscha arrived in Los Angeles in 1956, delivered by the car trip he and high school friend Mason Williams took in Ruscha’s black 1950 Ford from Oklahoma to the suburban-like stretch of a rapidly developing L.A.   Ed Ruscha’s One-Way Street By Jaleh Mansoor, OCTOBER, Winter 2005, pp. 127–42. Edward Ruscha arrived in Los […]

Anthony Kiedis & Ed Ruscha Driving Sunset Blvd. (2011)

No other artist today personifies the mood and attitude of Southern California like Anthony Kiedis. It’s a distinction he and The Red Hot Chili Peppers have earned for over two decades of music that’s shaped the contemporary sound of the West Coast. Like Ed Ruscha, Anthony Kiedis drew inspiration from Los Angeles and used words […]